28 March 2022

A few nights ago, we binge-watched a season Sanford and Son, a 70's era sitcom favorite in my family. In one episode, Lamont was engaged to be married and Fred wanted to help him by giving the couple money to start their life. Fred did not have any financial wealth to pass on to his son, so he decided to go to his bank for a home equity loan. At the meeting with the banker, Fred was surprised to see the banker simply look at a city map and decide the value of the property without ever requesting a formal appraisal. Fred's property was being redlined, a practice that lowered the value of the property, reduced the amount of the loan and further diminished his family's generational wealth. While this story is fictional, the reality is that redlining---the discriminatory practice of making a financial lending decision based on a geographic area and the people who reside there----is real-world form of discrimination that has diminished the wealth of many American families.

In the United States, redlining is a discriminatory practice in which services (financial and otherwise) are withheld from potential customers who reside in neighborhoods classified as 'hazardous' to investment these neighborhoods have significant numbers of racial and ethnic minorities, and low-income residents (source: The Black Experience, Wikipedia). It is a practice that started in the 20th century and continues to this day. In 2021 and 2022, lawsuits have been opened against real estate appraisers who continue the practice of undervaluing homes that are owned by Black people. It has prompted an art exhibit called Undesign the Redline, "an interactive exhibit, workshop series and curriculum explores the history of structural racism and inequality, how these designs compounded each other from 1938 Redlining maps until today, and how WE can come together to undesign these systems with intentionality."

Origins of Redlining Historically, the government Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) was established in 1933 by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation Act in the FDR administration. The HOLC was responsible for categorizing areas of cities and evaluating their risks. This makes sense from a lending perspective however, the evaluations went beyond the age and condition of the properties to include references about the race, ethnicity and nationality of the neighborhood residents. The text below, from Mapping Inequality, Redlining in New Deal America, describes how the HOLC assessed a city in Georgia.

"HOLC staff members, using data and evaluations organized by local real estate professionals—lenders, developers, and real estate appraisers—in each city, assigned grades to residential neighborhoods that reflected their "mortgage security" that would then be visualized on color-coded maps. Neighborhoods receiving the highest grade of "A"—colored green on the maps—were deemed minimal risks for banks and other mortgage lenders when they were determining who should received loans and which areas in the city were safe investments. Those receiving the lowest grade of "D," colored red, were considered "hazardous." ...HOLC's agents there described the residents of Carver Heights as "a fair class of negroes and low type of white." Originally, they assigned a grade of "D" to Carver Heights. But their "consensus of opinion later changed" and they gave it a "C." The change of grade followed from a change of perspective. They made an effort to not just see the neighborhood from their perspective as white men. "In other words," they explained in the neighborhood's area description, "it was considered from a negro standpoint of home ownership, rather than a white, since there are more negroes than whites in the neighborhood."

The practice of redlining is one of the better examples of systemic racism committed and enforced by a U.S. president, legislators, senators and other members of the U.S. government, the impacts of which have been long felt by Black and other minority communities in the country. This is the basis of Critical Race Theory, an argument that American social life, political structures, and economic systems are founded upon race, which (in their view) is a social construct.

Manhattan and the Bronx locations of racial populations published 1920, restored reproduction. P Cardmone.

Segregation

As more minorities moved into the cities, the more the neighborhoods were downgraded by lenders and the property values decreased. Seeing Latino, Asian and Black people moving into a neighborhood was deemed negative for economic reasons and non-Latino/Asian/Black people did not want them to move there---creating a tense racial environment. A diverse neighborhood was viewed as negative and drove the majority populations to move out of the cities ("white flight"). According to the APA, "the more that white Americans perceived this foreign cultural threat, the more they reported wanting to move out of those communities."

Harmful Economic Effects of Redlining

According to the Federal Bank of Chicago, in the The Effects of the 1930s HOLC "Redlining" Maps, redlining patterns "are consistent with the hypothesis that the maps led to reduced credit access and higher borrowing costs which, in turn, contributed to disinvestment in poor urban American neighborhoods with long-run repercussions”

Without access to adequate loans and funding to improve neighborhoods through home equity loans, the residents in redlined neighborhoods were unable to maintain or keep their homes. Those individuals were often forced out through foreclosure. The neighborhoods often suffer blight, opening up opportunities for wealthier individuals to buy up cheap property, raze it and build new neighborhoods. The new, high-income, neighborhoods very often displace the original residents, who can no longer afford to live in higher housing cost and property tax areas.

Gentrification and Displacement

Gentrification of ethnic neighborhoods leads to the displacement of families who have resided in an area for generations. In addition to disrupting cultural ties by dispersing residents, it also dilutes the political strength of a community.

This socio-economic problem is being studied by various organizations, academicians and institutes. The Harvard University Data-Smart City Solutions project, Where is Gentrification Happening in Your City? purposes to highlight, in several major cities, the "dislocation of low-income residents due to prohibitive price..." and the fact that "...social justice advocates, policymakers and urban planners have begun to consider strategies to combat the byproducts of gentrification in recently-developed or developing neighborhoods, such as providing low-cost amenities and rent controlled or low-income housing."

GIS Data

GIS mapping has become a way to analyze population changes and identify the precursors to gentrification and displacement. "Some describe gentrification’s impact as revitalization that for the most part benefits the entire neighborhood’s population others equate it directly with the displacement of existing residents," as stated in Mapping Susceptibility to Gentrification: The Early Warning Toolkit. The authors of this paper use city maps to plot areas with incomes that fall into one of six categories relative to the area median income (AMI).

In Social Inclusivity in the Hardscape, an author uses the US Decennial Census and the 2010-2014 American Community Survey, and US Census Tiger data to develop a Change Score, which she defined as: (% change White population - % change Black population + % change residents with Bachelor’s degrees + % change median household income) / 4.

City and urban planners have an obligation to ensure that the members of communities are not displaced during economic "revitalization." In addition, the original residents should be involved in building a new community that benefits the old and the new community members---not just the new.

Racial discrimination has an ongoing detrimental impact on communities of color and those in the U.S. minority populations. To those living outside the communities who are not witness to, nor experienced in discrimination, the terms systemic or structural racism may have very little meaning or relevance. However, historic government-sanctioned economic and housing discrimination from redlining has led to segregation and gentrification that has further impacted lack of access to healthcare, higher birth and material mortality, high rates of homelessness as well as over-policing of communities of color where poverty and crime are rampant. To conclude simply, the reason it is referred to as systemic is that it is all connected---and so are we.